


a tiding of magpies

by Harmonica_Smile (Rescue_Remedy)



Series: Law's Hybrid Collections [12]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Background Doflamingo, Canon Related, Complete, Cora lives but, Established Relationship, How They Met, Law's Canon Hobbies, Law's back story, M/M, Mentions of Sora Warrior of the Sea, Relationship Development, Soft KidLaw, character exploration, relationship exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:21:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24589009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rescue_Remedy/pseuds/Harmonica_Smile
Summary: Kid was the collector but Law, the magpie. Black, white—songs of honey and wire brushing the night sky.ORTwo grifters. One junk shop. True love.
Relationships: Donquixote "Corazon" Rosinante & Trafalgar D. Water Law, Eustass Kid/Trafalgar D. Water Law
Series: Law's Hybrid Collections [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1157702
Comments: 12
Kudos: 37





	a tiding of magpies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lojo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lojo/gifts).



* * *

**A Tiding of Magpies**

* * *

Kid was the collector but Law, the magpie. Black, white—songs of honey and wire brushing the night sky.

True. One of the shitty eight percent that protected nests and lined them with the bright and pretty pulled from the hair and scalps of little girls pedalling bicycles through the birds' home range. The tykes had only wanted an ice cream from the shops. Law didn't care. Scarred 'em for life.

Kid knew magpies were sociable, but territorial. Sometimes mean. Law could be all three. They raised cuckoos at times, the chicks so different from their own but treated like kin. The imposter kicked its foster sisters and brothers from the nest—if its mother hadn't already devoured the eggs.

Law was the magpie, but Kid the collector. He picked up the Taisho-era plate. People threw out the old because purchasing the new heralded beginnings. How many oceans had it crossed? He wiped his sleeve across its surface, turned it and located the maker's mark, or not. A line of grime coated the porcelain base like dust trapped by tape.

Two hundred beri—going for a song. He pulled a few coins from his pocket, clinked them onto the saucer on the counter (eyed that too), waved away the offer of a plastic bag, but wrapped the plate in soft cloths before sliding it into his backpack. He'd easily sell it for thirty times what he paid, not factoring packaging and his own labour into the asking price.

Magpie songs passed from parents to child—in this part of the world the females sang too, duetting with their partners. Law's song may as well have been a raggedy old crow's call for all the beauty it had to it. Crows were enemies of magpies, but Law made friends in strange places. Had strange friends from strange places.

His guardian was a methylated spirits-draining, cigarette-sucking, derelict who lived from one winnings to the next. Law visited him every second Thursday to make sure he didn't bet his pension on the first race of the day. Dropped in more regularly than that.

Cora loved Law like asphalt evaporates the rain—Law being the rain and Cora the baking pavement releasing hints of moisture that contributed nothing to the clouds.

However, the surface was solid and the only one clumsy enough to fall was the crow himself. It hadn't always been like that apparently. The clumsiness, yes, the dependency, no.

Law had lined that nest. Bought a comfortable little home in the outer suburbs for Cora—maybe too big for one, but crowded with two. As landlord, Law knew Cora would never be kicked out and the gangly corvid (and wily magpie) took advantage at times.

When Law didn't have time to fix the things Cora broke in clumsiness, drunkenness, or childish spite, Kid was called in. Why the spite? Kid wasn't sure. Cora had the look to him of never quite believing a roof provided shelter from the rain.

Magpies will introduce you to the entire family if you gain their trust. That shambly crew Law drank with—it'd taken him some time to front up to Kid's with a few in tow. But once he had Kid knew things were stepping up. Dorks, one and all, but Killer liked them, and they countered the skittishness Law sometimes failed to hide.

Magpies love puddles after showers, sparkling and reflecting the light. Diving and preening droplets through their plumage, tummy's distended, heads thrown back, throats raised, warbling about the earth as god's domain and their own. Kicking up a ruckus. Noisy buggers.

That was Law. Kid liked cupping a hand over the soft curve of his lower belly when he was relaxed, and spreading his fingers further.

Cuckoos and crows aside, young magpies were kicked from the nest after a year and begging was ignored after six months, the birds growing big and strong enough to fend for themselves. But not mature enough yet, no. Some stayed four years.

Space was a premium. The young ran in packs, in tidings, up to fifty of them, until they secured real estate and managed to pull a partner to share their investment with. Guard it with.

"I'd probably still live with them," Law said, turning a shiny coin over and over and between his fingers. Kid had polished it. Law visited and Kid had left it on the kitchen table in plain sight, next to the plate resting on the scarves he'd wrapped them in. "I loved them."

He says it easily about those he's lost. Never tries to hide what he gained, who he is, because of them. Who he might have been.

"I dug hanging out with them." The coin is from Flevance. A dime a dozen, a beri a bushel. When there are no people there is no-one to use, lose, and circulate the currency. Maybe the only thing from the forsaken city not made of white lead.

"You were ten."

Law laughed. "Yeah, I didn't have much choice." But it was better than anything that came after it. It was magic. He remembers that.

He'd wanted to please his mother and father. Lami and Sister's sickness made him lose sleep. But his parents loved him. He knew that. He was safe with them. In those days, he preferred strawberry ice cream to matcha.

Then he lost them, and he wasn't safe. Until Cora, until now. The bite of matcha settled better on his tongue.

Law's guardian was on the pension because his crazy-arsed brother couldn't stand that his shattered-mirror-vision wasn't the lens everyone viewed the world though. Especially Cora. His younger brother. His charge. His responsibility. So he'd taken matters into his own hands and shattered the disbeliever so he fit right in.

Cora had tried to take Law from Doffy's viper-nest of ground-glass blame. Law hadn't borne the brunt of his anger at the time, because the nonsense Doflamingo spouted was no less believable to the kid than having lost his sister to a fire and having his parents shot in front of him.

They were all affected by the white lead that gutted Law's home place anyway, so time was limited, but there were ways to say goodbye and Law never learnt any of them.

Certain parties had taken a liking to the Trafalgars' research on the disease. Law played dead as their delegation ransacked the house. Clever boy. Lami was bedridden from the sickness. The killers started the fire in her room. If Law had twitched a finger, he'd have given himself away. So he lay there, sucking in blood, the dusty carpet, and smoke as it filled the house, the street, the town. Buildings burnt to the ground.

Maybe there'd been time to grab her once they'd gone, but the intruders splashed gasoline and lit the match inches from her mattress.

He'd been lucky to get away—at least she'd been sleeping and he didn't hear any screams or calls for help—and when one of Doffy's goons came across him far from the white city, huddled in an alleyway corner, burns hiding the blotches of amber lead, children's services was the last place on the minion's mind. Nasty little fucker almost bit him. He'd do. He'd do.

Cora drank then too, though not to incapacity. Doflamingo. He'd been his brother his whole life. His mind was rutted and potholed. Cars drove from A to B—but not without breaking an axle or popping a tyre every now and then. If the vehicle skidded, the driver needed to read the room, the track, to make sure they didn't roll it. It was so easy to roll. Particularly with a kick or a twist or a retraction from the owner of the road, a buckling of the trajectory of the mind.

Doffy. Cora hadn't even thought of saving him when he was a child. Doffy protected him, Cora listened to what he had to say. That was the way of the world. But the younger brother grew stronger. Not strong enough to defy Doflamingo, but strong enough to disagree with the gangs he ran and the way he ran them.

By the time he realised he didn't want to be there, the window for escape was narrow. But it was there. Law adored the books and idea of power that Doflamingo placed in front of him. Revenge for everyone, for everything, that had happened to him. Rosi, Cora, concentrated on the books. Focused on the kid's absorption and curiosity.

Doflamingo knew the benefits of pleasure to keep one committed, to staying put. He dealt in it on the daily. Law was reading at university level before the age of ten. Had picked up a lot from his folks.

But the Family sweetened the deal at times to keep him studying, Doflamingo taking note that he and the other kids pored over the Sunday papers for that comic strip, _Sora, Warrior of the Sea_. Government propaganda, and it worked. They ate it up.

Buffalo and Baby 5 had learnt to read when they'd been adopted into the Donquixote gang, and Sora was their level of comfort, enjoyment and ability across all the written word. But Law understood or asked questions about the tomes of philosophy, psychology and physiology Doflamingo dumped in front of him. The comic strip was Law's treat and Cora won him over by slipping a few annuals and monthly specials of everyone's favourite marine into shopping bags heavy with academic texts. It took time though. Law wasn't bought easily (even if an ice cream usually sufficed with Buffalo).

A hero was a hero. It didn't matter which jurisdiction they represented. Cora peered in from the corridor as Law ploughed through one article after another, jotting notes, designing formulas, scratching at the back of his neck. Slumped in his chair, feet kicking against the struts, he'd finally reach across for the compilation.

Nothing could shake his concentration then, and Cora tidied around him, trying to stack the research books so they didn't spill, then sat on the single bed, smoking, his long legs taking up half the room, wondering if he could get Law away?

He could. He did.

Doflamingo's ire with his brother was lit further when Cora took receipt of the antidote to the disease that riddled Law's body, the toxin. The bratty little shit wasn't the only one afflicted and Doff had promised a high-up in the Royal Family (they'd been evacuated from Flevance) he'd get the medicine to him. Someone must have slept with the stablehand along the way.

The formula was still in the experimental stages, the Trafalgars having been assassinated before their hard work in creating an antidote was realised. The government had not released it, and was there any need to with the population succumbing to the nasty affliction? For all the public knew, it was highly contagious, but the threat had been eradicated.

The medication worked. It was effective. The wrong recipient imbibed it. Cora paid the price. The healthy became the invalid, the invalid recovered. Strong. Cora needed for him to be strong.

Law took care of his guardian from an early age. The small payout was enough to fund Law's attendance at some low level private schools. The kind that absently murmured about scholarships to better institutions, to universities, to intern programmes—to hospital residencies for those so inclined. So few applied. Law hunted them down. Cora was in agreement

Law started flipping burgers at thirteen, arriving home smelling of fat. His pay supplemented the pension. If he hadn't finished his homework at school, he'd sit down at their formica kitchen table, stealing cold soggy chips from the take-out bag in front of him, and complete it before he turned in.

In Kid's kitchen, Law pocketed the coin as if his right hand didn't know what his left was doing, as Kid knew he would. It's not that he didn't display his treasure, he did. Albums with transparent envelopes for coins from all over the world, Law's careful handwriting below each entry.

But he was a wanderer. Once from necessity. Now from choice. Light fingers were part of the deal. Kid smiled to himself. Couldn't wander too far. Cora couldn't look after himself, and magpies occupy the same turf for life. It's why some were so protective.

And partners. They often mated for life, though either man had wandered and sampled and fucked up and been fucked up by others, but had also found and been found before they properly ran into each other. In a junk shop.

* * *

Kid delicately turned over the plates, painted nails tapping against the china, while his partner in grime sorted through the knives. Killer honed the bluntest blade to shine, _zhwinging_ it along and either side of the butcher's steel, pressing the steel into the block he kept at home.

In the row across, a guy sorted through a transparent spearmint container, pulling out one Flevance coin after the next.

"They're not worth anything." Kid's voice rattled the dust and muted light that spilled across the worn carpet. The hipsters usually only rummaged through the clothes, searching for granny-cool and lenseless glasses. The old crockery, the crappy currency—that was Kid's realm, his treasure to find.

"I collect trash," the guy said, not looking up from the task. They were the only three customers in the shop. Kid took in the ink. That growl of a voice was unexpected.

He rotated the plate again, and kept the scavenger in sight from the corner of his eye. His fossicking was more than that. He flipped each coin over, scanning for...had to be a particular date?

"Those ones?" Kid was an expert. This was his trade. Plus, maybe there was something worth finding in that haul. Something overlooked. He moved his face the guy's way again. "Flevance? Not one date more important than the other."

The pierced git, yeah, Kid put him down as a git—never mind his own fluffy coat and ruffled pantaloons—the git flicked him a fuck you glance from under the brim of his poncy white hat. Wannabe hipster? An amalgam of appalling fucking taste, that was clear.

"Beg to differ."

Abrupt. Begged nothing. Kid was putting across his version of friendly. What was in there? He'd searched through it before and found nothing amongst the currency.

The guy pocketed one. The whole box was only 500 beri and all proceedings went to Sister Caramel's orphanage. Pretty low. Kid opened his mouth to protest, and the guy stared right at him, sauntering past, carrying the lot to the register, along with two commemorative coins he'd purloined from the small pile of collectibles Kid had piled up.

"Boss," Killer tipped his head, and Kid was at the till breathing down the neck of the thieving little shit before he knew it. Somehow the weirdo kept Kid at arm's length with an elbow to his ribs while he fished out the beri to pay for his purchases.

"Mr. Eustass." Dadan looked at him from behind the counter and she only used mister, only used his family name, when she was planning on knocking heads together.

"Mr. Trafalgar is also a valued customer." She took his beri, and Law carefully put all coins, even the useless ones, in his messenger bag.

Trafalgar, huh? There were worse names.

Bouncing off a doorframe, Kokoro wandered in, attracted by the commotion. She usually started on the wine just after lunch. The op shop was run by these two old tough-as-nails dames. "Law! Your book arrived. Y'know that marine fighting the bad guys and..."

"Sora," Killer said coming up to the till with the knives, eyeing the volume in Kokoro's steady hand, despite the slur to her words. "Warrior of the Sea."

Kid noted that this Trafalgar, this Law, didn't flinch, though Killer was three-axe handles across and wore a hockey mask. Killer bristled with excitement though. He fucking what...? And true, Dadan was probably scarier but this stranger wasn't to know that.

"Rare edition," the guy said, turning minimally to Killer, blocking Kid with his shoulder, keeping his bag on the far side of him.

"Worth a pretty penny," Killer said and Kid's ears pricked up.

"Mmhmm."

The Trafalgar dude forked over what was a small fortune for the junk store, but only the price of a value meal at the fast food chain down the road.

Killer whistled. "You'll get a good amount for that."

Law looked at Killer as if he'd spat in the sacramental wine, which, to be fair, both Killer and Kid had done more than once in their teens. They'd torn up more than one vestry too as the altar boys only the fire and brimstone preachers could handle. It was why this Sora shit came as a complete surprise. Kid thought he knew his friend inside out.

"Not for sale." Trafalgar took out his wallet though and faced Kid full on. "Eustass-ya." He'd drop the -ya once their territories intermingled, but for now it kept the both of them the further sides of distant. Not that Kid understood the speech quirk. It gave the guy away. From here, but not from here?

"How much were you planning to charge?" He set his bag down, wallet next to it and, after flicking through the pages of the annual, placed it alongside the coins, alongside Kid's coins. Killer's gaze—Kid could read them—was covetous. Salivating behind the mask. Who knew?

"For the commemoratives? The two." Trafalgar looked his way again, holding his fingers out so the number was entirely clear, "How much?"

Kid scratched at the back of his head forgetting the plate. Law's eyes followed it, amusement lighting them as the ceramic hit his scalp. Some kinda warning? Kinda guy who took joy in other people's fuck-ups? Once Kid knew better he realised Law had been thinking of Cora.

"What?" This guy hadn't got them fair and square, and now he wanted to rip him off and pay less than he should? Wanted to rub salt into the wound?

He shrugged. Pretentious fuck. What'd he need a hat like that for in this kind of weather?

"I collect special edition coins and wanted to secure those two." He patted his bag, now over his shoulder, then glanced at the clock on the wall. Cora worried when Law didn't keep his schedule. Kid understood all this later.

The coins were worth something, but Kid needed his books to pinpoint, and to then mark-up the value. Law pulled out a 10,000 beri bill.

"They're not worth this much. Believe me," Law said, placing the money on the counter. "Call it a spotter's fee," and Killer swooped it up before Kid could refuse, or murder the prick in front of him, or extort more.

Gobsmacked. Kid reached out, and his reflexes were nothing but fast, but this guy was shadows and sleekness and was by the door, wallet in back pocket, bag secure, before the tips of his fingers could even graze his coat (in this weather too, what'd he need a coat like that?).

"Thanks." Law waved at the ladies behind the register and they returned a distracted waggle of fingers as they sorted damaged clothing from good. The smell of mothballs filled the place as the doorbell jangled behind him. Kid picked up the two plates worth his money and headed to pay.

The door jangled again. Kid ignored it, trying to get Kokoro or Dadan's attention. The clomp of boots. Trafalgar crossed the room. Back for more? Good. Now Kid could punch him. He moved Kid's plates to the side, Kid homing in on the action, pulled out his wallet again, angled out a card, rested that on the lip of the saucer for change. Was the look on his face all business and only business?

"If you find any more of those commemorative coins or the ones from Flevance..."

"How about Sora?" Kokoro asked, sniffing a skirt and tossing it onto the clean pile.

"Yeah, Kid?" Killer said.

"That too," said Law, "But maybe your friend has first dibs?" Law scoped Killer, all songbird curiosity.

"Damn right," Killer said. Slamming, yes he slammed, the knives on the counter. Neither Law, Kokoro nor Dadan flinched, though Kokoro complained about the grain. As if a hundred drunken bums hadn't burned their way through it when smoking was allowed inside.

"I'm interested," Law said. "You find them, give me a call."

A businessman first, Kid stifled his instinct to rip the card in two. The fucker sauntered out, the coins jingling in his bag, and Kid read it.

"Doctor Trafalgar?"

Dadan pulled out a cigar and lit up, regulations be damned. They'd removed the battery from the alarm. She was the one responsible for most of those burns in the panelling. "Yup. Works at the local. Few years out. Grew up around here. Cranky but popular."

"What's he doing slumming it in op shops?"

"Anyone's money is welcome, Kid." Kokoro took his. "And yeah, it's his turf. Been here most of his life. Treats some of the locals for free."

Strange fuck like that hanging around a dump like this.

"He's got roots." Dadan said.

Kid pocketed the card. He'd put an extra high margin on the plates to make up for the profit that Trafalgar-dick had swindled him out of, and he'd have to keep an eye out for those books for Killer.

He refused the bag offered and wrapped the plate in the soft cloths in his backpack. Killer did the same with the very dull knives.

* * *

Flicking through the _Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Numismatics_ , Kid went from memory. The old emperor's face was on the back of the coins, the date a few years before the summer Olympics held twenty years ago. The currency highlighted that event.

The page prior showed a war year when only one very limited batch of coins had been minted. They sold for 30,000 beri each, starting. From the smallest denomination to the highest.

He turned the page, hand tight, lips downturned, fingers of his other hand wrapped around the neck of his beer. He'd track him down if he'd ripped him off. If he thought Kid was a financial chump just because lalalgar was a doctor, he had another thing coming. He took a swig and peered closer at the page.

That was them.

Beginning rate, 1000 beri, finishing 3000 for mint condition, and even with a soft scrubbing (with a toothbrush) in soapy water, the coins wouldn't be anywhere near mint. The doc had paid four times the basic price. Not top dollar, considering any possible mark-up, but he hadn't cheated him.

Killer entered the room, buffing the handle of one of the knives. He laid it on the table, gently, no clang. Pulled out a chair, sat, kicked his legs out, folded his arms and eyed Kid's book. "What's up with the doc?"

Kid wasn't sure, but he picked up the card Trafalgar had left and turned it in his hand. He grabbed his phone from his pocket and punched in the numbers, waited for the ring. If there was one thing Eustass Kid was good at it was securing his market.

**Author's Note:**

> Op-shops are called thrift stores in the U.S. and charity shops in the UK, I think. 
> 
> Chips=fries.
> 
> I'm not sure if the KidLaw crew will like this, but there you go. I'm not sure of it, but I do like it. MarcoLaw fans, I haven't given up on them. Law's just so malleable ;-)
> 
> I've run with the basic conversion (not accurate) that for example 100 beri is roughly equivalent to one dollar. Roughly.
> 
> Hope Law's backstory doesn't drag.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Any kudos or comment love is greatly appreciated.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Sorry about Cora, Lojo, but at least he still lives, eh? Far too late, but happy birthday! 😁


End file.
